About Forrest School for Dogs
How the program started, who it’s for, and the dogs and families it has changed.
Forrest School for Dogs began with one person, a fenced wooded area at home, and a hunch that dogs needed something modern life had quietly taken from them. This page is where you can meet the founder, see the work in action, and find the right way to get started.
Tara Stillwell
Tara Stillwell founded Forrest School for Dogs. As a homeschooling mom drawn to the Scandinavian forest-school model of learning, she found herself wondering what would happen if dogs got the same thing: time outdoors, real social bonds, and the freedom to learn through experience rather than drill. The name carries that idea forward, with the spelling borrowed from Forrest, the family’s Golden Retriever, who could have benefitted enormously from everything in this program.
Her thinking was shaped by Sarah Stremming’s work on Cog Dog Radio, where Tara first encountered the word “decompression” for what happens to a dog’s nervous system when off-leash freedom in nature is restored to them. That recognition sent her back to what she already knew, and eventually to building Forrest School.
She started small: a day-train model in her own fenced, wooded area at home, alongside private work with guardians and board-and-trains. When her circumstances changed and she was pushed beyond the fence, the work grew with her. She raised her own skills and the skills of the dogs and guardians she worked with, and came to see that Forrest School could happen out in the wider world, not just behind a fence.
Today Tara shares the approach well beyond her own training business. She has talked through the philosophy on Cog Dog Radio and The Canine Classroom podcast, presented at the LEGS in Motion conference, and built a professional development webinar for trainers, daycare and shelter staff, and other pet professionals who want to bring nature-based group programs into their own work.
A look at Forrest School
